Dave Webb is a veteran journalist of more than 20 years' experience (15 of them in technology), Webb has held senior editorial positions with a number of technology publications. He was honoured with an Andersen Consulting Award for Excellence in Business Journalism in 2000, and several Canadian Online Publishing Awards as part of the Computing Canada team.

Dave, you ask if the Pixel makes sense. It does for people like myself. I work (as a writer and teacher) eight to ten hours a day on laptop in the cloud. I want the best keyboard, touchpad, and screen that is available, and I also want access to the internet for email and research. The Pixel seems to be the computer I’ve been waiting for, so I’ve ordered the LTE model.

gisabun

You’ve ordered one without even seeing it in person? How do you know it has the best keyboard and touchpad? And I think every computer can access the Internet.

Dave Webb

And I think the answer is different for everyone. For my purposes, to spend that much on a laptop, I’d want local storage and applications, too. Of course, I may be a little old school there; for my work-from-home days, my go-to machine is a desktop plugged into a 32-inch flatscreen TV.

For those of us in the minority who know how to install an OS, this isn’t the right device. Then again, as long as we can ensure owner override (and possibly a legal mandate for owner-installable secure boot keys) to protect owners rights there won’t be a difference on the hardware side for that minority of us who want/demand that flexibility.

That said, I think a “real OS” is overkill for a vast majority of users, something that seems to get lost by far too many techie geeks. I’m a techie, but recognize that what I want is not what the majority wants.

gisabun

I agree. I [for example] am not a fan of Google’s Chrome browser. it is a buggy browser. But if that’s what they want to use, go ahead.

http://www.flora.ca Russell McOrmond

A machine with the computing power of a laptop, but the near-zero-software-maintenance of a tablet? Makes perfect sense to me, even if it wouldn’t be my personal device. I’m a sysadmin that doesn’t want zero maintenance — but know many people who this would be far better for than a laptop running a traditional desktop OS like Windows, MacOS, Ubuntu, etc.

I got an earlier Samsung Chromebook that my wife uses, and it seems ideal for that extreme majority (95+%?) who are not power users…